If you are gonna decide to guilt trip me by saying someone might potentially kill themselves if I refer to them as… them or he or she instead of bun or jae, then I’d say you’re being emotional abusive.
Also, judging by the votes I’ve gotten so far, it seems you’re gaslighting me when you say no one wants to listen.
Its not that neo-pronouns seem silly.
Its that they convey no useful meaning to anyone who does not already know that person, personally.
Sometimes you have to write things down in a manner that conveys useful information to say, apply a person for a government grant or aid of some kind. Sometimes these things are gender or sex specific.
Sometimes people who don’t know a person need to read things about them and make decisions that could prevent them from starving to death, being murdered from a domestic abuser or living on the streets.
Writing bun repeatedly in correspondence or on a government form isn’t going to work.
You cannot have a potentially infinite list of pronouns that you somehow expect everyone to just learn, and make this work in any kind of wide system where people don’t know that they even are pronouns.
Pronouns are kind of a fundamental, fixed element of English.
Its different with a noun or adjective as there are many of those, and it is far, far easier to learn new ones and use them correctly.
Like, I’m an anarchist, but not to the point of total linguistic anarchy.
He/She/They is fine, and won’t confuse the hell out of everyone. We have pronouns in English that are not gender deterministic, nor dehumanizing, and they are They and Them and Their and Themself.
Hell, when I was managing the databases for the non profit I worked at, I went through a ton of work to add in the ability for clients to be able to indicate their preferred pronouns and have it be reflected system wide.
No one, out of thousands, used it. Not one, and that includes tons of people who identified as trans, gay, lesbian, bi, pan, asexual.
After 6 months we reverted to he/she/they because, in addition to no one using it, having 4 open string fields instead of a key value indexed to a lookup table was slowing down the server and potentially a security risk if someone decided their pronouns include ;“DROP TABLE *” or something like that.
If neo-pronouns are ever going to make sense, they are going to need to have agreed upon and fixed definitions.
If you want to say that ok, from now on, She and He are for straight cis people, and i don’t know, Je and Ke now refer to lesbian women and gay men, and you go on like that, as long as these terms actually have fixed agreed upon meanings, so on, they aren’t easily confused with existing words, then maybe something like that could work.
You would need a defined system capable of being taught to PreK through 5 students such that they could learn it.
I don’t see anything like that. I see a tiny minority of terminally online people making up new pronouns, unable to define them, and often changing them at a whim.
On a personal, colloquial, relatively close relationship level, neo pronouns can work the same way and inside joke or lingo amongst a tight knit group of people can.
Not on the scale of millions or billions, not without meaningful, at least initially fixed definitions.
EDIT: I just now realized you are the passive aggressive anti-realist solipsist, “I believe in magic but I can’t define it” person who argued that atheists are jerks by telling them what they define magic as.
Nothing quite seems to irk my autism like people who break language, congrats I guess on riling me up again.
If I could, I would hug you and give you a pastry. Thank you for being amazing, giving good explanations and keeping your cool in the face of that dumbass jerk. Hell knows my queer, autistic ass just can’t cope.
Language is important because it helps convey things. If a language is mangled to the point where it can’t be understood, it is no longer a language at all, and the person you have been responding to seems to either be a troll, too profoundly stupid or actively unwilling to engage in proper communication.
Also the point of personal pronouns isn’t to communicate information to others. It’s to validate the person who has the pronouns. Your giant wall of text ignores the entire argument I actually made and the entire point of pronouns. Maybe you should try caring about trans people instead of worrying about everyone else, and then you’d understand the point of trans pronouns.
Every trans person I have ever met uses he or she.
NBs use they.
I’ve literally gotten in brawls defending trans people where I was the only person using their preferred pronouns and this pissed off a whole gaggle of people who were assaulting them.
Your argument was that I could potentially kill (apparently you were referring only to trans?) people by not using their preferred pronouns.
Not only is that not a thing I do, not only are you incapable of understanding my apparently too nuanced position for you, I have literally done the inverse of what you claim of me, and have risked my life specifically over properly using a trans person’s pronouns, and may have saved their life.
Do you remember when I said your view of the history of magic, along with your rhetorical tactics, are quite similar to fascism techniques?
Fundamentally, the use of pronouns is to point towards something. And the more information is loaded into a pronoun, the better it can point. They arent here to validate the person, but to convey information and to point towards them during conversation.
People choosing their own personal pronouns, thereby choosing the way theyre pointed at, has the added benefit of validating them. But from a linguistical standpoint, all they do is change the pointer and the informations and assumption tacked onto that pointer.9
What the person above wants to express is: While neopronouns can be used in personal conversation, its not feasible to include them into the curriculum for anyone and the chance of your specific neopronoun ending up as a widely used one within your native language are near zero. I think your friends and your immediate surrounding should definitely address you by them. But especially with rapid changing pronouns or those that contradict the phonology of a language or that are close to existing words, they wont see much use. People will fall back to other pronouns, because it simplifies communicatiom for them.
Better than neo-pronouns, single person identifiers should be what they have always been, their name and set the pronouns as they/them, for English at least.
You cannot have a potentially infinite list of pronouns that you somehow expect everyone to just learn
Ackchyually yes, we do, they’re called names. A bit different, they’re nouns not pronouns, but functionally there’s gigantic overlap and best of all if the name is short enough it’s actually not much of a bother to never use pronouns to refer to that person. Most of all, it’s regular because we already conjugate names (“bun arrived”, “bun’s pants”, “the letter is for bun”). “bun brushes bun’s hair” not to mention “bun dresses bunself” sounds a bit strange but is perfectly cromulent.
…still if you get your panties in a twist over being addressed “they” instead of whatever you’re used to or, strictly speaking prefer, I think you’re off the mark. I’m cis call me they all you want: Being generic doesn’t take away from anyone’s identity. It’s like being upset that you’re being referred to as a human instead of a barber.
I’m not a solipsist, I’m an antirealist. I believe things are real, but that reality is a social construct and must be abolished.
Anyway, as a willful misgenderer of trans people, you may have a queer identity, but you are not part of the queer/lgbt movement. You have to be an ally for that, it’s a choice. So personally, yes, you’re queer, but socially, you’re not. Try actually respecting other queer people if you want to be queer.
There’s nothing more important to me than self determination. Now excuse me while I determine that your entire identity is invalid because you… refer to each person using the words they prefer you to use according to situation and social context?
I mean, I am a queer person, but ok.
If you are gonna decide to guilt trip me by saying someone might potentially kill themselves if I refer to them as… them or he or she instead of bun or jae, then I’d say you’re being emotional abusive.
Also, judging by the votes I’ve gotten so far, it seems you’re gaslighting me when you say no one wants to listen.
Its not that neo-pronouns seem silly.
Its that they convey no useful meaning to anyone who does not already know that person, personally.
Sometimes you have to write things down in a manner that conveys useful information to say, apply a person for a government grant or aid of some kind. Sometimes these things are gender or sex specific.
Sometimes people who don’t know a person need to read things about them and make decisions that could prevent them from starving to death, being murdered from a domestic abuser or living on the streets.
Writing bun repeatedly in correspondence or on a government form isn’t going to work.
You cannot have a potentially infinite list of pronouns that you somehow expect everyone to just learn, and make this work in any kind of wide system where people don’t know that they even are pronouns.
Pronouns are kind of a fundamental, fixed element of English.
Its different with a noun or adjective as there are many of those, and it is far, far easier to learn new ones and use them correctly.
Like, I’m an anarchist, but not to the point of total linguistic anarchy.
He/She/They is fine, and won’t confuse the hell out of everyone. We have pronouns in English that are not gender deterministic, nor dehumanizing, and they are They and Them and Their and Themself.
Hell, when I was managing the databases for the non profit I worked at, I went through a ton of work to add in the ability for clients to be able to indicate their preferred pronouns and have it be reflected system wide.
No one, out of thousands, used it. Not one, and that includes tons of people who identified as trans, gay, lesbian, bi, pan, asexual.
After 6 months we reverted to he/she/they because, in addition to no one using it, having 4 open string fields instead of a key value indexed to a lookup table was slowing down the server and potentially a security risk if someone decided their pronouns include ;“DROP TABLE *” or something like that.
If neo-pronouns are ever going to make sense, they are going to need to have agreed upon and fixed definitions.
If you want to say that ok, from now on, She and He are for straight cis people, and i don’t know, Je and Ke now refer to lesbian women and gay men, and you go on like that, as long as these terms actually have fixed agreed upon meanings, so on, they aren’t easily confused with existing words, then maybe something like that could work.
You would need a defined system capable of being taught to PreK through 5 students such that they could learn it.
I don’t see anything like that. I see a tiny minority of terminally online people making up new pronouns, unable to define them, and often changing them at a whim.
On a personal, colloquial, relatively close relationship level, neo pronouns can work the same way and inside joke or lingo amongst a tight knit group of people can.
Not on the scale of millions or billions, not without meaningful, at least initially fixed definitions.
EDIT: I just now realized you are the passive aggressive anti-realist solipsist, “I believe in magic but I can’t define it” person who argued that atheists are jerks by telling them what they define magic as.
Nothing quite seems to irk my autism like people who break language, congrats I guess on riling me up again.
If I could, I would hug you and give you a pastry. Thank you for being amazing, giving good explanations and keeping your cool in the face of that dumbass jerk. Hell knows my queer, autistic ass just can’t cope.
Language is important because it helps convey things. If a language is mangled to the point where it can’t be understood, it is no longer a language at all, and the person you have been responding to seems to either be a troll, too profoundly stupid or actively unwilling to engage in proper communication.
Also the point of personal pronouns isn’t to communicate information to others. It’s to validate the person who has the pronouns. Your giant wall of text ignores the entire argument I actually made and the entire point of pronouns. Maybe you should try caring about trans people instead of worrying about everyone else, and then you’d understand the point of trans pronouns.
Every trans person I have ever met uses he or she.
NBs use they.
I’ve literally gotten in brawls defending trans people where I was the only person using their preferred pronouns and this pissed off a whole gaggle of people who were assaulting them.
Your argument was that I could potentially kill (apparently you were referring only to trans?) people by not using their preferred pronouns.
Not only is that not a thing I do, not only are you incapable of understanding my apparently too nuanced position for you, I have literally done the inverse of what you claim of me, and have risked my life specifically over properly using a trans person’s pronouns, and may have saved their life.
Do you remember when I said your view of the history of magic, along with your rhetorical tactics, are quite similar to fascism techniques?
I guess not.
You’ve never met a trans enby? Dayum, so sheltered! You should try getting out there and meeting more queer people than just your little bubble.
Fundamentally, the use of pronouns is to point towards something. And the more information is loaded into a pronoun, the better it can point. They arent here to validate the person, but to convey information and to point towards them during conversation.
People choosing their own personal pronouns, thereby choosing the way theyre pointed at, has the added benefit of validating them. But from a linguistical standpoint, all they do is change the pointer and the informations and assumption tacked onto that pointer.9
What the person above wants to express is: While neopronouns can be used in personal conversation, its not feasible to include them into the curriculum for anyone and the chance of your specific neopronoun ending up as a widely used one within your native language are near zero. I think your friends and your immediate surrounding should definitely address you by them. But especially with rapid changing pronouns or those that contradict the phonology of a language or that are close to existing words, they wont see much use. People will fall back to other pronouns, because it simplifies communicatiom for them.
Better than neo-pronouns, single person identifiers should be what they have always been, their name and set the pronouns as they/them, for English at least.
Ackchyually yes, we do, they’re called names. A bit different, they’re nouns not pronouns, but functionally there’s gigantic overlap and best of all if the name is short enough it’s actually not much of a bother to never use pronouns to refer to that person. Most of all, it’s regular because we already conjugate names (“bun arrived”, “bun’s pants”, “the letter is for bun”). “bun brushes bun’s hair” not to mention “bun dresses bunself” sounds a bit strange but is perfectly cromulent.
…still if you get your panties in a twist over being addressed “they” instead of whatever you’re used to or, strictly speaking prefer, I think you’re off the mark. I’m cis call me they all you want: Being generic doesn’t take away from anyone’s identity. It’s like being upset that you’re being referred to as a human instead of a barber.
I’m not a solipsist, I’m an antirealist. I believe things are real, but that reality is a social construct and must be abolished.
Anyway, as a willful misgenderer of trans people, you may have a queer identity, but you are not part of the queer/lgbt movement. You have to be an ally for that, it’s a choice. So personally, yes, you’re queer, but socially, you’re not. Try actually respecting other queer people if you want to be queer.
Oh, telling me what I think and do again!
How original.
Let me know when you find the part of my text where I say I willfully misgender trans people.
Fuck, I’ve nearly been killed over defending a trans person and their preferred pronouns.
But you’re the arbiter of reality, so I guess nah, actually I’m awful.
Oh well.
That was a wild chat
There’s nothing more important to me than self determination. Now excuse me while I determine that your entire identity is invalid because you… refer to each person using the words they prefer you to use according to situation and social context?